“Fuck you and your fucking philosophy,” I said.
“God fucking dammit, Blake! I am not sitting on the sidelines again, while you cross another fucking line!”
“Then help!”
She did, or she started to. She said something, but my focus was wholly, entirely on the Lord.
There was a crash, and I saw her, free of the cage, hatchet in hand, June at her side.
“If I’m to steadily break you down and reveal facets of your being, which of the two should I break first? Your companion said kind words to the bound ghost. Do you feel a kind of fondness for it too? I could scatter her to the Ether with a swat of my hand.”
“You don’t touch either of them. You don’t touch me, either.”
My hands were shaking.
“I can do both, and I can bend you to my will, acquire the powers I wish to acquire,” the Lord of Toronto said.
“Wait,” Rose called out. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. All of it.”
“Your words have no weight, mirror-dweller,” Conquest said. He didn’t take his eyes off me.
“My words are those of a Thorburn descendant, with all of the power of a daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter.”
“Words with power, but nothing I care to hear. I’ll take what I need to know from him.”
“The barrier is one that slows time. You’re immortal, it’s insignificant to you!” she cried out.
“Significant enough. Time is always a valuable commodity.”
You can’t tell him, I thought. Don’t tell him you can go and get the books, or we’re all fucked.
Then I cursed myself for even thinking that. Because I wasn’t entirely sure I wouldn’t blurt something out in panic.
He was everything I couldn’t deal with.
“Can you knock down the barrier?” Rose asked.
He half-turned to look at her. “Potentially. But I’m wondering why I shouldn’t send one of you to fetch the books and return to me. A few months or years of your time are meaningless to me.”
“If too much time passes,” Rose said, sounding a thousand times calmer than I felt, “We lose ownership of the books. They pass to the next heir, and you lose the advantage of having the Thorburn diabolist in your grip.”
She was skirting the truth, and he was buying it.
“Fine. I am a patient being. I will figure out a way to negotiate a path through the barrier, and torture each of you in the meantime.”
It kept coming back to that.
He had us, he knew it, and at this point, anything here was him amusing himself.
“If we don’t give permission to enter the premises?”
“I think you will,” he said, with confidence.
His focus was on Rose, and I could actually think.
We had no bargaining chips. Nothing on the table.
No, we had one little thing. Twice now, June had damaged the environment. Breaking the cage, and dispelling the heat for a time.
It had been almost easy.
What else? I had to pull together all of the little things I’d noticed. What didn’t jibe?
I’d called him out on the strangeness of him leaving Rose and I to talk. Why had he done it? To give us succor and manipulate us?
No, it had been strange that he’d even explained that. I’d called him out on that too.
Why had he done it? To change the landscape? To change it so it snowed black?
What had been the point of that, when he could have started squeezing us for what he wanted right away?
“We could compromise,” Rose said. It sounded feeble, even to me.
“I am not one for compromises. I take everything I want.”
“The idea of conquest is rife with compromises. Cities get annexed, puppet governments and political figures stay in place, a broken populace can still riot, a-”
“I know what I am,” he said.
I wanted to signal her, to push her to keep going, but I couldn’t do it without potentially alerting him.
I could only use what she was inadvertently giving me.
Think. Why had he taken the time to adjust the area?
Did it require constant maintenance? No. I didn’t get that feeling.
But maybe he’d wanted to strengthen it at the core level, in anticipation of the arrival. He’d been fairly confident he could control a creature that had already been bound, which fit, given that he was Conquest. Or a Conquest. But maybe he hadn’t been entirely confident.
With that thought, other things fit into place.
“Then compromise with me!” Rose said. “With us. Why torture us to death when you could have all of our power?”
“Because I take everything I want. I can torture you within a hair of death and have your power at my disposal.”
The conversation continued, but I was thinking, scrambling to put everything in context, and I didn’t even hear it, now.
During the discussion with the other local powers, he’d stayed in the background, had remained mute, except to cut in and occasionally stop the discussion.
He’d only acted to seize at the opportunity I presented, making a hell of a lot of enemies along the way.
And, I couldn’t help but note, again, he’s a fucking Incarnation of Conquest in Canada.
I’d just invaded the Behaim household under the cloak of glamour. Why the fuck was I putting so much stock in appearances?
If I stripped it all away, if I looked at everything he’d said as if he had no power at all…
This bastard was the fucking Wizard of Oz.
A small, insecure, relatively powerless being, and a whole lot of pretending.
Maybe a dangerous amount of pretending, if he didn’t actually have the power to follow through on the threats he was making, when he said he could do horrible things to us.
I was panting, still trying to get my body and thoughts under control, while my emotions had the helm, but there was a note of triumph in that mess of emotions, now.
It wasn’t a realization that won this for us. We were still in his domain, he still had power, and not everything was appearances. If I’d realized this, one of the other powers had to have a glimmer of the same idea. Chances were good they knew. They had other reasons for backing off, and many of them weren’t small fry.
But it was one series of thoughts that shed light on the monster under the bed and made it just a bit less scary.
It was a desperate monster we were dealing with. One that was tormenting and scaring us because, maybe, it was clutching for power where it could find it, even if that meant threatening hostages.
“Is-” I started. He turned, focusing on me, and I momentarily lost my train of thought.
Easy to think something, but hard to act as if it were true. Which fit with what Rose had been saying about my glamour, not so long ago.
“Is… there another option?” I cut in, as Rose was about to speak. “Is there another option that might allow us to show you all the respect you’re due, Lord of Toronto? All due supplication?”
“You grovel after all,” he said.
“I suppose I can,” I said, eyes on the ground. “It beats the alternative.”
I knew what he wanted, now that I had a sense of him.